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Pop My Neck?

Last night’s dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream (that’s right, folks, Inception is my LIFE) was about zombies.

I dreamt that I was in a house — not a totally unfamiliar house, like maybe the house of grandparents of childhood friends or something twice removed like that — that was surrounded by zombies.

Well, I say “surrounded” but I actually saw very few zombies during the course of the dream. It’s was a beautiful, bright sunny day outside, and I and whoever-I-was with (sometimes Mike, sometimes a variety of other people in the way that dreams shift) KNEW that there were a bunch of zombies out there… because of… media reports or something, I reckon.

… or traffic signs.

There was a big, red, complicated gate structure on the… porch? carport? of this house. The fence was permanent, but the huge gate itself could be pulled completely out of the cement and relocated to another portion of the porch. This was mostly useless, ’cause it really only succeeded as a “gate” in one position, in which it was the same height as the (6-foot? 8-foot?) fence and therefore closed the circuit. In the other position, it was about 2 1/2 feet high and therefore worthless as a zombie-blocker.

Anyway, there was a LOT of lead-up to the actual zombie apocalypse part, during which we mostly just hung around the house, periodically stepping outside to mess around with the gate. (Why did we not just leave it up in the zombie-blocker position? Good question! We certainly should have, but dream-us was not very bright.) We acted like we were preparing, but really we were just bored and killing time.

Eventually, though, the zombies came, and they were not the slower, Night of the Living Dead zombies but were pretty fast and… semi-intelligent. Like, you couldn’t really be sure that someone who was talking to you through the door wasn’t just trying to trick you into letting them in so they could eat your brains. I’m’a call ’em Jonathan Coulton zombies.

See? You can hardly tell it’s a zombie at all.

So, anyway, the zombies were… let in… somehow… not by me. I totally didn’t get tricked into opening the door for brain-eating monsters and getting myself and my husband killed. Nope. Definitely not my fault.

Yeeeeeeeahhhhhh, I let ’em in.

So, they came in all polite and, “Oh, thank heavens you let us in! We could’ve died out theeeeEEAAAARRRRGGHGHGGHHGH!!!! *lunging at my face*” And I felt like a right twit!

The actual zombifying bite wasn’t shown, as the dream sorta skipped to later when Mike and I were in a dark room together — maybe a cellar of some sort — and I was waking up. I was lying against his chest as he was kneeling, like they have to do in Romeo and Juliet so you can see Mercutio die:

Could you cheat out a little more, Romeo?

So, we were in this dramatic posture, but I still somehow woke up thinking, “Whew! Just a dream about zombies! No real zombies. Guess I’ll go back to my regular life… in this cellar… surrounded by clawing and scratching noises… with this gaping wound in my nec– ohdamnI’mazombie.”

I told Mike that he had no choice but to kill me; otherwise I’d infect him too. (Side note: Mike and I have a sort of Oral Will & Testament Agreement which states that if the party of the first part succumbs to zombiehood, the party of the second part will posthaste dispatch party of the first part with shotgun cum velocitate and with no additional agreement or arrangements to be forthwith set out.)

Despite this oddity, he tried to comply. He twisted my neck this way and that, wrenching it far to the left and then to the right. When I was staring out over my own back, I realized that I was already in the first stages of zombification and would shortly begin an attempt to consume my lover, so I started shouting instructions at him:

“Pop my neck! Hurry! POP MY NECK! It’s not working; you have to do it harder! POP MY NECK!!!!!!!!”

…so not CLEAR instructions, but…

He was, understandably, upset at this state of affairs, but despite tears welling up in his eyes, he kept trying to comply. Finally, he must have succeeded, ’cause everything went black.

Then I woke up.

I was in bed with Mike, in much the same position as I’d been in the dream, except he was kneeling on the opposite side of me.

He was trying to pop my neck. Not twist off my head, as I’d wanted in the dream, but actually trying the chiropractic thing — turning my head a little too far to the side to relieve neck discomfort.

But he was trying to do it while I was sleeping, so he was being very slow and gentle and trying to somehow leave my head on the pillow so that I’d sleep through it.

When I sat up, wondering what the hell he was doing, he flopped back on his heels, tears rolling down his face, and said, “I’m sorry! I just can’t seem to do it! I’m trying… I’ve really been trying to pop your neck, but it obviously isn’t working because you keep asking me to do it, and no matter how hard I try, it just won’t pop properly, and you keep begging me to do it, so I know it’s hurting you really badly, but it’s not working, and I’m so sorry!”

I realized that I’d been saying aloud in my sleep what I was saying in the dream, and Mike was trying to comply.

Then I woke up. Again.

This time, I was in what I take to be real life. Mike was asleep, as was Spriggan, and no one’s neck needed popping. This reality made a good deal more sense to me, mostly because Mike doesn’t cry, and he was so sobby in those previous iterations.

It’s also funny to me that in my dreams, I often believe in the idea that if I say something often enough or loudly enough in my dreams, my real body will say it aloud. This happens all the time in nightmares, where I’ll realize I’m dreaming and I’ll start trying to scream at the top of my lungs, hoping that I’ll make enough noise in real life that it’ll wake Mike up, and he’ll wake me up and save me from the nightmare.

It hasn’t worked yet. But my subconscious apparently still believes it’s possible.